My name is James. I live in Tennessee. I am 26 years old. I mostly hang out on the forums. My favorite series of games is Metal Gear Solid and in a close second is Resident Evil. I am really into retro games. I browse the GoodWill at least once each week looking for treasures. I own about every major system from the 2600 to the PS3 (no Wii, it got sold I needed cash), whether they work or not. My favorite console of all time is the Dreamcast. I have 3 of those. I got good deals on them. I love adventure games, I love Gabriel Knight. I have a love for FMV games, like Mad Dog McGree. I love the cheesiness in them. Feel free to add me on Xbox Live. My gamertag is AgentBBJ and on the Playstation Network it is Agent_BBJ

Favorite Movies:
Black Belt Jones (that is where the BBJ comes from in my name)
Robocop
Die Hard (I watch that every Christmas)
Back To The Future Trilogy
Indiana Jones Trilogy (What fourth movie?)
Almost anything with Zombies
Escape From New York

I rented Bionic Commando recently because I have not had much to play. I was really excited about the next gen (or current gen) Commando. I played the multiplayer demo and did not hate it but did not love it. It needed a tutorial before it put you into matches. Considering most people besides press had not played the game yet. We were not used to the swinging. I played a couple matches and kept dying. I am not one to rage quit but after a couple of matches trying to get used to the controls. I quit. I told myself that I would wait for retail release besides I am not in it for the multiplayer anyway.

I went to the local Blockbuster to find a game to play. I picked up Commando. I got home and put in into my Xbox. When you start up game, a Bionic Commando logo comes up and you hear one of the most beautiful versions of the theme song.

This is the favorite part of the game sadly. The music is great, just like Rearmed the music will blow you out of the water. I was also excited to hear Mike Patton as Rad. I love his music and loved his work in The Darkness (this is great game if any has not played). His work in this game is just so-so. He sounds like any other marine in any game. I was hoping for more. I felt the same way about everyone else in the game.

The gritty story line feels right in the new universe of Bionic Commando. Deadlocked Rad fits the world. The world feels very different from the commando I grew up with. I seemed to work though. I liked the look of the broken city. The world feels abandoned. There are a few minor complaints I have about the world. There are blue radiation areas in the world that kill you. It felt like they started the game as an open world game and realized that they could not make that way and abandoned it halfway through. This is not me saying I wanted an open world game but I think that should have thought of a better way to keep you out of the areas that they did not want you to go. Another problem is there is all this really nice scenery that you will skip by because you are swinging. There is no incentive for me to go to those areas. I am not a collect a thon fan. Some of the areas in the game only last 30 seconds to 1 minute. Anyone who is a fan will want to explore everywhere but not me.

The gameplay mechanics work pretty well. I think that they got the swinging down. I had very few glitches with it. One funny one is when I was trying to get on to a ledge that I was hanging from and I pulled myself up and Rad would not go on the platform instead he humped the bottom. The swinging has a learning curve. It feels like the first time you played the original trying to figure out what is going on. Even after beating the game, I never thought I mastered the swinging. The best and worst thing about the swinging is the auto lock. When you are fighting any enemy that you have to use the arm it will sometimes autolock right next to the enemy. It becomes extremely frustrating. On the other hand when swinging through the city the autolock works great. The combat does not work as well I well as I thought it should. The aim seemed to be off just a little. Where the enemies were crack shots, especially on the highest difficulty. This is a minor complaint though.

Why in the game do I have a pea shooter though the whole game? This really bothered me. When I got one of the better weapons I was excited to try it out. You only get so much ammo for it. It is few and far between for that special ammo. When those weapons are needed they fall out of the sky. They are sent to you by Super Joe but they always seem late. You have to scramble until they fall out of the sky for you.

The enemies are not varied enough. Everyone gave Terminator crap because of not varied enough enemies. Bionic Commando falls into this same problem. There are the standard soliders, example Machine Gun guy and Sniper. The Mechs are not varied either. The ones that can fly or they have a big gun. They are all killed the same way. It gets repetitive after a while. The areas that can skip the enemies and swing through felt more tense top me than fighting them.

SPOILER
I have a problem with the ending of this game. The big spider thing that they are hyping you up for whole game. That fight is a big dud. The only thing I can compare it to is in Metal Gear, you turn of the computer instead of fight the metal gear. So I fight the terrorist leader, I thought this would be the end of the game. It seemed like an epic fight. We know that Super Joe is behind what is going on. I thought this is how they would leave it open for a squeal. So after fighting him, you meet up with Super Joe in an awesome mech suit. After is splattered Meg's brains on the ground. I could not wait to fight him. The ending of the game was a QTE. WHAT?????? I really did not get the chance to fight Super Joe in the suit. That could have been awesome. So I kill him and myself. After the credits, they hint at a sequel.
END SPOILER

Overall the game is pretty good. I have played through much worse in my time. The mulitiplayer is not worth it and the single player is pretty short. If you get frustrated with the controls at the beginning of the game just keep trying them. They get easier. I would recommend to anyone that likes action games and Bionic Commando fans. It is a nice to see where the story went but your money is spent better on Rearmed in my opinion. It is a rental.

If you just skipped to the end without reading the whole article. Buy this instead.

I have introduced myself on the forums. So I thought since the forums are down, I would introduce myself on the C-Blogs. My name is James. I am 26 years old. I have been playing games since I was about 5 years old. My first memory of gaming was when I was really little. My father had to take on odd jobs because we were really poor. He was working at a church as a janitor. They had an Atari 2600 in the youth room. He would have never brought me normally but there was no other that day. I had nothing to do until I found that 2600. I remember playing Pitfall and dying a lot but I loved it. What hooked me as a gamer though was the NES. I got the NES with the pack in Track and Field. I have never looked back since then.

I own almost every major game system. I don't have a Neo Geo (sad face), Sega CD, and anything before the 2600. I have multiples of the same console. I think that pegs me as a nerd. I mostly play my 360 right now. I have been putting a lot of time into Far Cry 2. I really like that game. It has it's flaws but something keeps drawing me back to it even after I lost my 95% of the way through the game save. My favorite console of all time is the Dreamcast. I still have it hooked up to my TV when my friends come over for some fighting action. They always beat me. I slap the controller and hope that something happens.

My favorite games are the Metal Gear series, Resident Evil, Contra and any of the Scumm games. There are many other games but these are games that I can go back to anytime to play and still have a great time with them. I have been an adventure game fan since I was little. I grew up on those Scumm games. My uncle had a collection of them, me and him spent hours in Sam and Max. Those games introduced me to the idea that games could have good stories and from those games I went to more adult games, like Gabriel Knight and Laura Bow. I which that I had a good PC to play some newer games but I am happy going back to those games. They hold up better than any other genre of game.

What I do outside of gaming? Well I like to read and watch TV. I have not been reading as much lately. I have been playing Phoenix Wright before I go to bed, so the books have been on the backburner. I don't watch TV as much as I used to. I have been trying to limit myself. My favorite shows are Lost, Futurama, and (ugh) Simpsons ( I know that it is not good anymore but I feel some connection to the show for some reason still). I watch mainly older movies. Hollywood has not had a good idea in so long. My favorite movies are Robocop and Die Hard. I am an action movie junkie. Here is a picture of Robocop on an unicorn to break up this wall of text.

Right now I work part time for a national radio show. It is not as fun as it sounds. I screen calls there and call people back. I am looking for a full time job but no one is hiring around here just like everywhere else in America.

I found Dtoid through the podcasts. I started listening to Retroforce Go and It felt like I was listen to friends talk about video games. I started visiting the site and subscribed to the other podcasts. After listening to a couple, I knew that I wanted to be part of this community. I joined the forums and lurked for some time but after while I decided to make an intro post and failed. I fixed it and then everyone was cool. I learned a lesson that day. DON"T SUCK. So I hope that I have been not sucking since then. Well to end my intro blog, here is a picture of me and Jessica Rabbit. Why Not? Cartoon Boobs are boobs all the same.